Guide to Jewish Literature - January/February 2025

This critically acclaimed bestseller presents the captivating story of Clara Prinz, a remarkable woman forced to leave her native Berlin in 1939. As Clara traveled alone on a voyage into the unknown, she turned to memories of her adolescence during La Belle Époque – the Beautiful Era filled with optimism and cultural transformation at the dawn of the twentieth century. Through Clara’s chance encounters with notable personalities of the period, Clara’s Secret weaves an unforgettable tapestry of personal and historic events. Clara’s Secret is ultimately a compelling story of the advancement of humankind and the survival of its decline. 

Summer 1977- As the Son of Sam terrorizes NYC, Laila Levin, a Jewish sociologist from Long Island, meets the dashing Dr. Eduardo Quintana at her post-doc presentation on America’s teenage pregnancy epidemic. They share strong family values and a mutual passion that stuns them both. After a brief courtship, Eduardo persuades Laila to accompany him to his family ranch near Española New Mexico, the teenage U.S.  pregnancy capital. Their love is tested by his controlling mother, drop-dead gorgeous ex-girlfriend, and cultural differences. As tensions run high, Eduardo’s cousin reveals a life-changing family secret.

Ita was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. The place was the Pale of Settlement;  the year 1918. Caught in the political and social upheaval during the Russian Revolution, Ita’s family were attacked by anti-Jewish riots: pogroms. Escape was the only way out. But Americans ceased to welcome Jewish refugees.

The Ukrainian pogroms,1918-1921, have taken on new scrutiny. Because pogroms created willing murderers and normalized the killing of Jews, historians now believe this time period the true start of the Holocaust.

Sixteen-year-old Lazar Hermanski and fourteen-year-old Daria Solov survive the 1881 Warsaw pogrom, endure a perilous journey in steerage, and arrive in New York. They marry, have a family, and navigate the conflict of adjusting to their new country and culture while attempting to follow their Jewish traditions. Throughout the story, family members participate in historical events, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the women’s suffrage movement, and interact with historical figures such as Lillian Wald, Fanny Brice, and Fiorello LaGuardia.

From the opening vignette in which a photograph is a silent witness to history to the powerful coda “Miracles,” a novella set against the vibrant panorama of the Yiddish theater in America, the fifteen memorable narratives in The Girls of Jerusalem and Other Stories span continents and eras as they chronicle love and loss, piety and heresy, mysticism and rationality to reinterpret ancient tropes of exile, dislocation, and profound change, revealing a new understanding of Jewish history and memory. “Luminous tales of exile and loss that bequeath new life” Kirkus Reviews (starred review). A best book of the year selection.

Felice and Ira Zaslow’s love story spanned almost four decades, from the beaches of Far Rockaway to a comfortable suburban existence on the south shore of Long Island. Then came the morning of September 11, 2001. Through the days, weeks, and months that followed, Felice had to find her way through unfathomable trauma, on a path she had to forge herself, seeking guidance and role models along the way. This remarkable and inspiring memoir puts a very personal face on a national tragedy, facing down the darkness by looking for the light that is always present.

It is May 2014, and Professor Klara Lieberman receives a letter from her estranged mother. Her long-ago-disappeared father, she learns, is buried in Warsaw. As the Polish government is giving financial reparations for land it stole from its Jewish citizens during WWII, Klara’s mother wants her to go to Poland to collect it, while Klara is determined to go find answers about her father.

The Sun Follower is more than a powerful immigrant story, it is a fascinating personal narrative about three generations of strong, resilient, sometimes audacious Jewish women, their loves, heartaches, victories, and their struggles for survival and success. The book is set against Russian Revolution, Second World War and latest world events. It is a captivating read and the affirmation of the strength of the human spirit. 

“This tour de force sets the standard for anyone thinking about Anne Frank for years to come.” – Dara Horn. Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. With antisemitism on the rise, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around how Anne Frank has been understood and misunderstood, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.

Life-long friends Naomi, Miriam, and Becky are approaching middle-age gracefully—despite occasional hot flashes—until life tosses each woman a crisis. Becky rallies against her only son marrying a non-Jew. Naomi sleeps alone in a bed made for two after her husband leaves. Miriam’s heart aches over lack of family and her belief that siblings connect the past, the present, and the future. Then a dusty discovery delivers a potentially lethal blow to their friendship. While two of the women fight to save the relationship, one desires nothing more than its demise.

Julie is devastated when, hours after she loses her job, her twin brother dies in a car crash. She returns to Pittsburgh to live with her grief-stricken father. But facing empty weeks before her new job begins, Julie decides to honor her late brother by travelling to the place he dreamed of visiting with his Israeli girlfriend. It’s a trip that will change Julie’s life in more ways than one, after she meets her own Israeli prince charming. “Lovers of romance and travel will enjoy this story of a woman discovering new beginnings while facing grief.” Booklife Reviews

Lt. David Stein was a navigator on a B-17 bomber during WWII when his plane was shot down over Germany during a bombing mission. He spent the last nine months of the war in Europe in Stalag Luft I in Barth Germany. Learn what it was like for him and other Jewish-American P.O.Ws. held captive in Nazi Germany, at a time when these Jews knew that Europe’s Jews were being exterminated by the Nazis. What you learn may surprise you. 

In Farewell To South Shore, readers are introduced to 15-year-old Sherrie, who grew up in a close-knit Jewish family in the 50s and 60s.Her relatives are loud, argumentative, and quirky, but they are also loving and solve problems with love and great food. Sherrie breaks out of the mold and tackles the real world. She goes to law school and becomes involved in feminine issues like abortion, women’s pay, abuse, the Gay movement, and single mothers. Farewell to South Shore is a metaphor for a place and time we can never return to.

Kirkus Reviews calls it “a moving, insightful, and beautifully crafted story.” Losing a life partner strikes one million women every year. At 65, Margaret Mandell loses her husband of 45 years to a fast-moving disease, and she cannot conjure a future without him.

Chased by memory, Mandell begins to write letters to the man she loved. But when a tenderhearted college professor steps quietly into her life, listening attentively, as Mandell reads her accumulating stack of letters out loud, she is forced to recalibrate her vision of life—what is still possible, how much love one heart can hold.

Seidner, a high schooler who is from a long line of Hadassah members, wrote this book about great Jewish athletes after getting Koufax and Greenberg autographs for his bar mitzvah. His quest to learn and collect helped him find his Jewish identity and strength as he experienced antisemitism. The book contains original interviews with players, history of every Jewish Major Leaguer and many of their autographs.